


After All These Years

by likethenight



Category: Still Crazy (1998)
Genre: Gen, Older Characters, Post-Canon, Reflection, Summer Solstice, Years Later
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2016-07-30
Packaged: 2018-07-27 17:07:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,639
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7626883
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethenight/pseuds/likethenight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karen spends the summer solstice sunrise in the stone circle at Avebury with Brian, seventeen years after the Fruits first reformed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After All These Years

**Author's Note:**

> Avebury really is a glorious place, and it really is better than Stonehenge, in this writer's humble opinion, anyway. 
> 
> Written around the summer solstice 2016; I thought I'd have a go at picturing how things might be with the characters now. For palavapeite, fantasmusica and mrs fantasmusica, with love.
> 
> Contains spoilers for the film, if you haven't seen it (go check it out!), given that it's set seventeen years later...

At sunrise on Solstice day, Karen finds herself standing in the middle of the Druids' Circle at Avebury, staring up at the dull grey clouded sky and wondering what on earth she is doing here. One of those cryptic messages from Brian, hinting that he'll be here, now, and that he'd enjoy it so much more if she were here with him. Except that she can't see him anywhere, no matter how many times she scans the crowds, and she wonders to herself if there will ever come a day when she doesn't drop everything at a single word from Brian. 

It's been seventeen years - dear god, seventeen years - since the Fruits reformed and Brian resurfaced in her life, and true to form they've reformed and bollocksed it up and reformed again more times than she thinks she can count over the years. Brian guests sometimes, on album tracks here and there, and very occasionally on stage, if the occasion is special enough; Luke stuck around for a few years until he got a better offer, and the Fruits had a bit of a revolving-door of guitarists for a bit, until they settled on a fellow casualty from the Seventies, a guy called Col whose original band never quite made it but who can play like the devil himself and was only too happy to give up delivering household appliances and come back to rock n' roll - and Luke comes back sometimes too, if the Fruits and his current band happen to be on the same bill, or if he happens to be in the area at the time. Of course, every band and his dog from the Seventies have reformed these days, it's almost fashionable, and the Fruits fit right in alongside the rest of them. They've even done Glastonbury, more than once. In fact, they're halfway up the bill on the Pyramid stage this coming weekend. So Karen was sort of in the area anyway when Brian's message popped up on her phone yesterday afternoon. 

Brian still lives at the sheltered community where Karen found him tending his garden, all those years ago. He's still tending his garden, and he's beginning to get the lines and wrinkles he deserves - and he seems calmer, happier, safer; but he doesn't like to spend too long away, and Karen has the distinct impression that he's only as okay as he is because he has the safety and security of the community to keep him on an even keel. She still misses him, the old him, more than she can adequately put into words, but she's learned to put it away, there's no use tying herself in knots over what might have been. She's learned to be content with irregular meetings and cryptic text messages - he took to the smartphone with an ease that surprised her until she remembered that Brian had always been ahead of his time. That was one of the reasons he had so much trouble with the real world.

It's busy here in Avebury, but not nearly as busy as Stonehenge, a few miles away. This place isn't as well-known, and its sense of ancient spirituality hasn't been quite so worn away by the feet of millions of visitors and the fences of English Heritage. Karen leans back against one of the stones - you can do that here, they let you walk among them (well, the stone circle runs right through the centre of the village, it'd be a bit difficult to cordon them off) - and gazes at the sky, letting her eyes slip out of focus.

"Can you believe," a soft voice comes from behind her all of a sudden, "in all these years I've never come back here."

Karen jumps, pushing herself away from the stone, and turns to find Brian standing there, a sheepish little smile playing around the corners of his mouth. 

"I've only come back the once," she says, "but you were busy being dead at the time."

Brian's smile, still sheepish, twists a little, they've been over this ground more than once before and Karen doesn't really mean to rake it all up yet again, but something in her can't quite help the dig. 

"I'm sorry I missed it," he says, like he's said more than once before. 

Karen nods. "The message from the gods of rock n' roll might not have had quite the same effect on the lads, if you'd been there, though." She can't help a tiny smile at that, the memory of standing here, right where they'd shot that album cover, all of them ready to give up on the whole daft stupid idea, when the clear, beautiful tones of Brian's guitar had come wafting to them on the breeze from a ghetto-blaster carried by a young lad leading his flock of sheep over the earthwork at the edge of the stone circle. That had been the nudge they'd needed, her ragtag band of ridiculous middle-aged men, it had pushed them into setting their differences aside and having another go at it all, for Brian. Well, at least _trying_ to set their differences aside. 

They're a bit better at all that these days, although Les and Ray still have their moments of yelling at each other in sudden, incandescent rage. They seem to have learned to get on with each other, mostly, in a way that they weren't able to when they were young, and couldn't really manage when they were older either. Now that they're all edging into properly _old_ , they all seem to have mellowed, just a little bit. Just enough to make their sporadic recording sessions and tours bearable. Well, something approaching halfway bearable, anyway. Karen sometimes wonders why she's still putting herself through all this. 

She has, at least, managed to make a second career out of it all. After that first, mostly-triumphant performance at Wisbech, people started approaching her, people who remembered her from before, and not just Clive, others too. Gradually she found herself getting sucked back into the whole thing, and now she's got a management and promotion company that doesn't deal exclusively with ancient rockers back on the gravy train; she's got a few younger bands as well, people Luke's put in touch with her, and mostly it's going pretty well. Claire is her second-in-command, which never ceases to surprise Karen, when she stops to think about it. She'd thought that awful European tour would have put Claire right off anything to do with rock n' roll, just as she herself was put off by the Fruits' antics in their first flush of youth. But Claire had caught the bug too, it seemed, watching as the shambles turned into something brilliant, something that transcended the sum of its parts, just as Karen once had - and once Claire had finished with university she announced that she was going to get herself an MBA so that she could come and work with Karen and keep everything under control. And so now here they are, Claire already down at Glastonbury handling the various acts of theirs who are appearing this weekend, including the Fruits, god help her, though she has very little trouble with them, they're all wrapped right around her little finger - and Karen here at Avebury, feeling the past shifting restlessly under her feet. 

"It worked out all right in the end, though," Brian ventures, and Karen has to smile at that; he always was horribly optimistic, even - especially - back in the old days, probably because he was very rarely not off his tits on one exotic drug or another. Fragile, crazy, but always full of sunshine, he was then. Whimsical, one might say, and he still has a little of that now, edging ever further into his seventh decade. 

Off in the distance a group of people begin chanting, and Karen checks her watch; the sun is about to rise, it would appear, although you'd never know it, the cloud cover is as thick and grey as ever. 

She takes a deep breath of the clean, clear country air. "It did. Eventually, here and there. Are you coming to Glastonbury?" Brian's appearances with the Fruits are still impromptu, never planned; he can't cope with the pressure of having something he has to turn up to, so they keep it informal and go with the flow; it all depends on how he's feeling on the day. 

"I might come along," he says. "Feeling all right at the moment. It might be fun to have a bit of a wade around in the mud. Spend a bit of time with the other ancient hippies." He flashes Karen an impish smile, the sort that reminds her so vividly of his old self, back in the heady, hazy days of the early Seventies, when Keith was still alive and anything was possible. 

"You'll fit right in," she says. "Although you might have to watch out for the teenagers."

Brian chuckles sheepishly; for reasons none of them can figure out, the Fruits have quite the following among teenage girls, the ones whose parents (and probably grandparents, dear god, how are they all so old?) have brought them up on classic rock. Sometimes there's even screaming. Karen is never going to forget the look on Ray's face at Roskilde a couple of years ago when a pair of girls who couldn't have been over fourteen pretty much launched themselves at him, squealing incomprehensibly. Astrid had given them an intriguing-sounding diatribe in Swedish and they'd quaked in their mud-encrusted boots and scuttled off again; Karen still doesn't know what Astrid actually said to them, but apparently Swedish and Danish are similar enough that it's possible for speakers of the one to understand the other, so presumably the two little girls understood well enough. 

Astrid is still Astrid, of course. Karen has never quite got over being stunned that she and Ray went the distance, and they're still together. Astrid is still in charge, of course, and Ray is still hopeless, possibly even more so these days. He was bad enough before modern technology advanced as far as it has; now he's almost completely helpless. Karen's usually got at least one young intern tasked with keeping Ray under control, and his Twitter account definitely isn't written by him. To be fair, Beano doesn't do his either, but Tony and Les are both making a pretty good fist of running theirs.

Tony. Of course Tony, still and always. Things were a bit awkward between them, for a while, but it all smoothed out in the end. He's been going out with a fantastic session backing singer for a few years now; she's half his age and has an excellent set of pipes, and she seems to make him happy in a way that Tony and Karen both know Karen never could have done. It was always Brian, for Karen, and she's known for forty years or more that there was no hope of that working out in any satisfactory sort of way. She's all right being friends with him, now - it's better to have him in her life than to believe that he's dead, and she finds that she doesn't really need anything else. Her short and disastrous marriage was quite enough, really. Although of course Claire came from that, and she can't ever regret that part of it. 

No point regretting what's past and done. Karen's done her share of that over the years, and these days she can't be doing with it any more. She's made her peace with the past. More or less, anyway.

"It'd be good if you could make it," she says after a while. "I've had Jo Whiley's people on the phone trying to set something up, she wants to interview the lads on the site, and they were definitely fishing to see if you'd be there."

"Maybe," Brian allows. He's got rather better at interviews over the last seventeen years, had a bit of practice, although he doesn't take part in press conferences any more, doesn't do anything that's on-the-spot. Everything is prepared in advance and arranged so that he's comfortable. Jo Whiley's been good with him before, and Karen reckons she can be trusted. Karen keeps a tight control on who's allowed access to Brian; she guards his privacy fiercely and she has seen to it that there has never been a repeat of that fiasco of a press conference at Wisbech. 

They stand there in silence as the sun, presumably, rises, listening to the chanting in the distance and the sound of each other's breathing. Karen realises belatedly that they're standing right by the stone against which Brian had his photo taken, all those years ago, the photo that became the stock picture of him, printed on a hundred thousand posters pinned to a hundred thousand walls, year after year, even long after the Fruits had been all but forgotten, and before they came back to remind everyone of their existence. That image of Brian was one of the iconic pictures of the Seventies, of rock n' roll excess and hedonism, along with the face of Ziggy Stardust and that picture of Robert Plant, bare-chested and leonine, clutching his microphone. Karen reckons that a good few of those posters were pinned up by people who had no idea who Brian was, picked up at high street shops or student union poster sales ten or twenty years after the fact by people who thought the photo looked good, who liked the look of Brian with his dark eyes and his sly, inviting smile. 

"So much for the sunrise," Karen says after a few minutes, and Brian chuckles.

"It's the same every year, though," he says. "Cloudy Solstice sunrise, wet Glastonbury, wet Wimbledon. The sunny British summer is something of a myth."

Karen has to admit he's right, although she's slightly disappointed not to have actually seen the sun rise. It's been a long, long time since she's been awake to see the sun edging over the horizon, in the summer at least. Probably not since she was originally running around with the Fruits, barely out of school, certainly not out of her teens. She's well out of her fifties, now, and here she is again, with Brian, in Avebury, watching the sunrise. Well. Watching the sky at dawn, at least. Two out of three isn't bad. She thinks she's probably going to have to have a nap when she gets back to the guesthouse she's staying at near Pilton, not too far from the festival site. Apart from anything else, she's got a busy few days ahead of her and her sleep schedule is about to be thoroughly buggered, so she'll take opportunities to nap whenever she can.

"I've written a song," Brian says. "Well, I've written lots of songs." That sheepish smile again; Karen knows full well that he's still scribbling down snatches of lyrics and riffs on bits of paper as they occur to him, still storing them under his bed in Sainsbury's plastic bags. "I've written a song for the Fruits."

"Oh yes?" Karen says, sounding as neutrally interested as she can without betraying her sudden excitement; Brian's contributed to a few tracks on the Fruits' post-reunion albums, but Les and Ray have been doing the vast majority of the songwriting. Brian seems to struggle with stringing his ideas together these days; he'll come up with a sparkling, glittering riff, or half a verse and a hook line, but he can't quite seem to get them to connect into actual full-blown songs. What he does come up with is as brilliant as anything he wrote when they were all young, and a whole song would, Karen is certain, be nothing short of wonderful.

"Yeah. It's sort of a counterpoint to _The Flame Still Burns_. Sort of. Like, looking at it from the other side." He shrugs, looking shy. "Like looking at it from down the other end of the telescope. After all these years." He breaks off, heaves a deep sigh. "I still miss him, you know. Keith, I mean. Every single bloody day. It's been nearly forty-five years and I still look around for him every now and then. I still want to bounce ideas off him."

Karen nods, understanding; well, that makes sense. Brian and Keith were unusually close for brothers; no Ray and Dave Davies-style feuding for them. They were like two halves of the same person, Keith bright and brash, the perfect frontman, and Brian glittering but fragile. Both of them too talented for their own good. They made the perfect songwriting partnership; it's no surprise, really, that Brian struggles with it on his own. It's not the same with Les or with Ray, how could it be? Tony doesn't write much, and it'd be no use asking Beano. 

"Stupid bastard," Brian goes on, but the affection in his voice belies his words. "I've never quite forgiven him." He gives way into a rueful chuckle, and Karen can't help but join in.

"I think it took the rest of us a while, too," she says with a smile. She was never as close to Keith as she was to Brian; he was too busy being the frontman, the showman, chatting up the groupies and never really letting anyone in, except Brian of course, and to a certain extent Les. That doesn't mean she wasn't devastated when he overdosed, of course, doesn't mean she doesn't still miss him herself. Just not as much as she missed Brian. 

It was hard to forgive Keith, though; hard to forgive him for throwing it all away, nearly spelling the end of the Fruits as well as his own life. They nearly called it a day after his death, very nearly threw in the towel, but then Brian showed up one day at their rehearsal room, where they were all ensconced drowning their sorrows in cheap whisky, and perched himself on an amp and played them _The Flame Still Burns_ for the first time; and they all realised that they had to carry on, as much for Brian's sake as for Keith's. Ray wasn't the same, of course, but he had the star quality they needed. Karen rather likes Ray, she always has; he's almost but not quite fully conscious of his own ridiculousness, and she's very fond of him for it. 

"A Little Chef, though," Brian says with a wry smile. "Of all places."

Karen meets his smile with another of her own, cautiously, tentatively; they've never quite discussed this before, or at least, not with this layer of gentle humour overlaying it. "Pretty rock n' roll though, you've got to admit," she says. "And better there than some truck stop in the States." The Fruits have always been such an English band, it wouldn't have felt right to lose one of them on foreign soil. 

"True. Well, we always did do our best work on the road," says Brian in all seriousness, which he manages to hold for all of thirty seconds before the pair of them dissolve into slightly hysterical laughter, leaning against the standing stone behind them and giggling helplessly. 

"Is that what you call it?" Karen manages eventually, breathlessly. "Are you sure you're remembering the right band?"

"Fairly certain," Brian says, equally breathlessly. "Well, as certain as I can be, all things considered." He lets out another convulsive giggle, then pulls himself together. "Hughie tells me he's coming to Glastonbury. Only to watch and provide critical analysis though."

"And order the actual roadies around," Karen grins. "You can take the roadie off the road, but you can't take the road out of the roadie." Hughie might not be able to lift and carry like he used to, but he's as sharp as ever and Karen's still keeping him on as a consultant. What Hughie doesn't know about putting on a show isn't worth knowing, even with all the modern technology.

"I'll probably come along with Hughie, if I make it," Brian says. Well, of course. Hughie is still the one who sees most of Brian; all those years of looking after him and he's still doing it. 

"Don't forget your wellies."

"I'm hardly ever out of them," Brian smiles. "Wellies and wax jacket. Anyone'd think I was a country gentleman. Except for the hair, maybe."

"I don't know, there are probably plenty of long-haired country gentlemen these days," Karen shrugs. "The Longleat guy, for starters. Long-haired and eccentric, I think it's almost part of the job description, isn't it?"

"Maybe you're right," Brian allows. "Me and Beano, we pretty much fit the bill, then, don't we?"

Karen has to laugh at that. Beano Baggott is no more refined now than he was seventeen years ago - or forty-seven years ago, for that matter. He still lives on the caravan on the edge of his mum's chicken-ground, though his mum has been in a nursing home for the last five years or so. Beano reckons he can't quite bring himself to move into the house, says it'd make it more final. Karen thinks he's too used to the caravan, after all these years. He wouldn't know what to do with the house, rattling around in it all on his own. Country he might be, but a country gentleman he isn't. He's got the money for it, these days, once Karen sorted out the Revenue for him, but he doesn't seem interested. Beano knows his place, he knows what he likes, and it isn't a crumbling Victorian pile of bricks or a mock-Tudor monstrosity in the suburbs. 

Les always used to reckon Camille had her eye on a mock-Tudor monstrosity in the suburbs, but Karen knows he was always having her on. They're still in the rather lovely three-storey Georgian terrace they bought with the money from the roofing business, though the kids are grown and gone by now. The Fruits haven't exactly been a regular income over the years, but the albums still sell, even in these days of streaming and Spotify, and the money keeps dripping into their bank accounts. Ray and Astrid are, as it happens, still in their lovely crumbling Victorian pile of bricks; the original comeback happened at just the right time and they were able to take the place off the market. Good thing too, Karen would hate to think of Ray and Astrid trying to cope with a three-bedroomed semi in Pinner or wherever. 

Les still does some roofing, here and there, and Beano still has his job at the nursery to fall back on, though Tony has long given up his position as the sole holder of the concession for condom sales in the Balearics. He's a consultant for a record label now, advising them on the old bands and scouting out new ones, proper bands, ones who play their own instruments, write their own songs. He does well, doing the A&R thing without the title, he's found a good few next big things, and Karen is pleased for him, pleased he's found something beyond the emptiness of Ibiza and the bleakness of his sister's council flat. Hughie is basking in his own semi-legendary status, and Ray is...well, Ray is Ray. And Astrid is Astrid. They're still doing their thing. Astrid has her own health-food diet range, and Ray is making a fairly good stab at the whole rock-star thing, between the Fruits and his own solo efforts and a good few special guest appearances on other people's records. Not that they probably call them records, these days, the young kids, but Ray does have something of a teenage following, after all. He's been invited to sing on songs by everyone from Springsteen to All Saints to Ellie Goulding, would you believe it. Karen often doesn't. 

It's funny, Karen thinks, to look at them now. She'd never have predicted they'd end up here, seventeen years ago or even forty-seven years ago. She's never been one for looking to the future, always lived in the moment. Well, in the moment and in the past, especially in the few years before Tony pitched up at her work and talked her into reforming the Fruits. She'd been vulnerable then, been so fixated on maintaining the façade of mainstream middle-class respectability, but underneath it she was empty and aching, bewildered at what her life had become and wishing to have the times with the Fruits back again, no matter how awful things were sometimes. So when Tony turned up and suggested getting the band back together, of course she jumped at it. Partly to find Brian again, but mostly to try and recapture that feeling, the one she used to have when she stood at the back of the room at a Fruits gig, watching the crowd and wanting them to feel the way she felt. Terrified, yes, thank you Hughie, but also blissfully happy, caught up in the music and the moment. She'd have given anything to feel that again, and it turned out she didn't even have to; all she needed to give up was her job. She gave that up, and she got so much else in return. Maybe they all needed the time away, to make it all work again; but sometimes Karen feels as though, if they'd worked it out properly, they could have sailed right on through. Nobody would have had to get ordinary jobs, nobody would have had to burn out. Of course, the benefit of hindsight makes things seem so much easier, and they weren't equipped for it at the time, but sometimes Karen still finds herself aching inside, mourning for what never was. Even though she's made the last nearly-twenty years into the twenty years she should have had between the ages of twenty-three and forty-three. She still misses those twenty years. 

But, all things considered, it's not been bad. She has a job she loves, one she can live for, even if it came to her a little later in life than she'd have liked; she has Brian back, sort of, the most she can ever expect to have him; she has the Fruits back, and possibly better than ever. Life is good. Better than she might have expected it to be, seventeen years ago, before Tony came to see her, if she'd ever been one for looking ahead. 

"It's lovely here, isn't it?" Brian says, edging into her thoughts, and Karen smiles. 

"It really is," Karen agrees. "Much nicer than Stonehenge. Much less clichéd." They share a chuckle at that; Spinal Tap might just as well have been based on the Fruits at their most bloated and ridiculous. 

"Thank you for coming," says Brian. "It was better with you here."

"Less disappointing?" asks Karen with a wry smile. No sign of the sun, after all. 

"Not disappointing at all. Sunrise comes around every day, Solstice sunrise comes around every year. Sometimes they're cloudy." Brian smiles broadly, almost like he used to. "You're here. You and _here_ , that's what makes it special. Doesn't have to be today. It just seemed like a good time."

Still so bloody enigmatic. Karen has to smile. He'll probably be writing a snippet of a song about it, later. 

"See you at Worthy Farm, then," she says.

"Maybe," he says, and smiles that smile again, the one that used to mean trouble, or at least things more fun than well-advised. And Karen thinks he'll be there. He might even get up on stage and do a song or two. Luke's probably going to be there, he usually is, and his hero-worship of Brian would be comical if it wasn't so damn touching, the way the kid stood up for him at that bloody press conference at Wisbech. Not a kid any more, of course, but he still falls all over himself at first sight of Brian, all Wayne-and-Garth-we're-not-worthy. Maybe they'll do something together. They've done it once or twice before, trading licks, slinging riffs back and forth and splitting solos between them; their styles complement each other well, which is why the Fruits hired Luke in the first place. Luke's grown into his style, grown to wear it like a well-fitting coat, and he's gained the confidence and self-assurance to go with his youthful flash. He and Claire are friends now, good friends, now they've got over their youthful whatever-it-was. Karen's glad. Claire's a fantastic girl, a wonderful person and Karen's daughter, and Luke's a good kid - well, a good man, really - and the friendship seems to be good for them both.

Karen and Brian begin to head for the car park, and for the first time it occurs to Karen to wonder how Brian got here; he doesn't drive, never has, it was always considered to be a particularly bad idea. She's about to ask when she spots a familiar figure breaking away from a group of brightly-dressed but rather elderly hippies - well, aren't they all, these days? - and recognises the unmistakable figure of Hughie, his long hair and beard completely white these days but still larger than life of course. Karen is not at all surprised to see him; she should have expected it, she realises, given that Hughie is still Brian's main means of transport. 

"So much for the sunrise!" Hughie crows cheerfully, moving in for a hug, and Karen wraps her arms around him, delighted to see him as always. Hughie always was the one who kept her sane, or as close to it as possible. She isn't quite sure what she'd have done without him, back in the Seventies, or at the first reunion, or ever since. Hughie's always been indispensable. 

"How are you doing, Hugh?" Karen leans back a little in his bear-like embrace to look up at his grizzled face. 

"Oh, you know," he grins. "Same old same old. Some bits of me stiffer than others, these days." He gives her a broad, wicked smile as he lets her go, and she groans. 

"Don't ever change, Hughie."

"No intention of it, darlin'. So, are we going to Glastonbury, then?" He gives the pair of them an expectant look, and Karen glances at Brian. 

"I think so," Brian says, only a little tentatively. "It's a good place. Still got good vibes."

"Bit corporate for me these days," says Hughie, "but what the hell, you can still find a nice spliff or two if you know where to look." He chuckles. "And Michael's always good for a pint or two and a bit of reminiscing."

Karen smiles; the legendary Michael Eavis, owner of Worthy Farm and founder of the festival, is a longstanding friend, these days. He booked the Fruits for one of the early festivals, back in those heady, hazy days in the early Seventies, and though none of them has much memory of that occasion, they've had plenty of opportunities to catch up over the last couple of decades. Karen also has a lot of time for Michael's daughter Emily, who has taken over the running of the festival from her dad, the last few years. It's still very much a family affair, though it isn't quite the homegrown spectacle it was at the beginning, and Karen is looking forward to catching up with plenty of old friends over the next few days.

"Anyway," says Hughie, "best get this one back before he turns into a pumpkin or something. See you in a couple of days, Karen."

"See you, Hughie. You too, Brian, it'd be good to see you there." She draws Brian in for a goodbye hug. "It was good to see you today, too."

Brian hums and squeezes her tight for a fraction of a second. "Thank you for coming," he murmurs in her ear. 

"Maybe next year we'll actually be able to see the sun," Hughie grins, and Karen tightens her arms around Brian just briefly before stepping back and letting him go. 

"Next year?" she queries.

"Why not? It's been fun, hasn't it? Imagine how much more fun it'll be if we could actually see the sun rising." Hughie snorts, and they all start to walk back towards the car park, back towards their day-to-day lives.

"I suppose so," says Karen. "All right, it's a deal. See you back here next year. Same time, same place." She can't help smiling. Who knows if Brian will be fit for it, but he seems to be better these days than he's been in a long time - really, for as long as she's known him. It would be nice to have a standing appointment to meet up with him and Hughie, especially here. Karen had forgotten how peaceful and spiritual it is here at Avebury; she wasn't really in a fit state to appreciate it last time she was here, having just learned, or though she'd learned, of Brian's death. But this morning has been a revelation, the clear air and slightly uncanny atmosphere lending everything a slightly magical frisson and easing out of her the tension she hadn't even realised she was carrying. Karen feels like a weight is gone from her shoulders. 

They hug their goodbyes in the car park and part with a 'see you soon!' called across the roofs and bonnets of the parked cars; Brian hops into the front seat of Hughie's ancient Transit van and Karen gets into her Audi - well, the head of a music management company ought to drive something suitably swanky, and she's come a long way from her battered old Renault 5. They go their separate ways for now, but for once they know when they'll next be seeing each other. Old flames, still burning, and by now all three of them know that they always will.


End file.
